Continuing Progress

Never Done, Just Due

This week, I have been continuing progress on my animatic of Here There Be Tygers, by Ray Bradbury. I got some very helpful feedback about some of the timing and framing. I’ve been editing and cutting scenes based on that. One piece of advice that extends beyond this current project is that POV shots are okay, but try to include fewer shots from behind overall.

I have been struggling to find the balance between style and function for my storyboards and animatics. I was able to talk to an industry veteran about this, and he said that the messiness of my current work is okay. The facial expressions of the characters (particularly during close-ups) need to be very clear, but other than that, as long as the layout and action are understandable, the boards can be messy. He said that this current animatic of Here There Be Tygers would be a good first pass at an animatic. I felt very relieved hearing that! There is always room for improvement, and I will continue to push myself. But I’m glad that what I’m doing is alright so far.

After a lot of reviews and edits, I’m ready to start breaking down the major beats of my story, Vermillion. I’ve been meeting with several professors who have been advising me on how to tackle this project. The work for the overall project and the work for my Animation Studio 2 class have some overlap, but the objectives are very different. For class, I am creating an animatic of the opening. Ideally, I would create beats for the major moments in the story and then work to connect the beats, board them out, and edit the boards into an animatic. For class, however, we are encouraged to avoid the “waterfall method” and push for the minimum viable output as soon as possible. That means, rather than taking my time to explore the storyboards, backgrounds, beats and emotional moments, I need to get this section to be an animatic as soon as possible for class. Different methods of production for different settings. With that in mind, I am using this class and first animatic as a Look test. I will get all the major shots in (very roughly) to an animatic and then circle back around, redraw, and get some basic animation in, just to make sure that my ideas for the story work right off the bat.

This week I did some of the frontwork of ideation for the layout and framing. I took the initial story and drew some thumbnail sketches onto it. This helps me visualize my thoughts. It doesn’t look like a lot, but it’s a very important step to match the visual ideas to what’s happening in the story. Parsing out the shots and sequences will come later, as this is a board-driven story.

I drew some of the thumbnails on sticky notes to get a larger idea of what I had.

Finally, I found two 3D models of a bus and imported one into Story Board Pro. I spent quite a bit of time figuring out how to work in 3D in SBP. The scribbles that you see on the SBP shots were done with my computer trackpad, so don’t analyze them too closely! The are there because I was figuring out how the panels work with the 3D model and camera That’s part of the learning process. I refamiliarized myself with camera lenses as different distances needed different focal lengths to read the environment clearly.

I think from here, I will tighten up what I expect form each shot. I’m not trying to rush to the actual editing and boarding yet as I still need to determine how the beats of the story play out. After working on my first full storyboard (Here There Be Tygers), I’ve reflected on my expectations for my final output and progression. This section of Vermillion has no location changes and focuses on one individual character. The dialogue and pacing are not as lengthy as Tygers. This allows me to really explore the concepting and layout of the story. I’m very excited for this, and I feel good about the process!